Sheriff Daniel Winters called at 8:10 that morning and told me he expected the Dina piece to be big, subtly persuasive, well played, and on the stands by Tuesday. From the tone of voice, I could almost picture the resigned furrows on his deep black face. Dan Winters was a sheriff who understood the impurities contained within the larger concept of getting things done. So I did what any writer does when faced with impossible demands-agreed to everything.
He was quiet for a long moment, then gave me an address in the Orange hills and hung up. So, he had taken my bait.
The house was a magnificent wood-and-glass thing, tucked within a stand of Jelecote pines at the end of a long private road. There were two patrol cars, two unmarked, and the Crime Scene van parked in the driveway. When I got out the air smelled like a mountain resort. It was already hot. There was a nervous buzz in my stomach.
Marty Parish met me at the back door and led me past two dubious uniforms, down a long hallway, through a living room almost as big as my entire house, then down another hallway toward, I assumed, the bedrooms. He turned once to look at me as we walked but said nothing. I sensed a change in him from the night before, a change that went deeper than the simple fact he wasn't dumb drunk. Marty had a red patch where I'd kneed his forehead, but he also had the level-eyed gaze of a man who's got something on you.
"Sorry about last night," I said.
"You'll get yours." He gave me that look again, as if he'd found out something that put me, himself-everything-in a cold new light.
"Ready when you are," I said.
"I'll wait till you're not."
"How bad is this?"
"Worst I've ever seen. Two children."
"So Winters is ready to go public."
"Should have after the Ellisons. What'd you give him for this, another Dina story?"
"That's right."
Marty's eyes bored into me. "Nothing's right, Monroe."
He stopped at the first room on our left. I could see past his shoulder through the open door to a pale blue wall dripped with dark red.
"Meet the Wynn twins," said Martin, and stood aside.
I went in. My first thought was that an industrial accident had happened here, something involving faulty machinery and human flesh. You could smell the foul scent of innards exposed to air for the first and last time. The blood seemed to have been thrown at one wall-large impact splatters that ran like paint all the way down to the blue carpet. On the opposite wall were great wide smears of it, thick in places, then thinning as a brush might make. But the brush was a small boy-a few years old.
I guessed-who lay doll-like beside the wall where phrases he been crudely written with his blood:
MIDNIGHT EYE CLEANS HIPPOCRITTS SOJAH SEH
I took a deep breath and squatted down, looking at a cardboard mobile that had once probably hung over a crib. Little military airplanes lay flat on the floor at my feet-a P-51, an F-l 11, an AWACS jet. I took another deep breath, then looked to the far side of the room, where the crib was tucked into a corner, near a reading nook that extended out toward a garden. The alcove had windows on three sides. There was a hook in the ceiling of it, for the potted fern and macrame hanger that were dumped on the carpet below. From the hook dangled another boy, ankle bound, the binding set on the ceiling hook, his small arms out in front of him. He looked like a tiny diver descending toward a pool. There was, in fact, a pool beneath him. He turned very slightly on the hook; turned back.
I looked down at the cardboard airplanes again and apologized silently to these boys whom I hadn't come here in time to help.
I sensed Marty behind and above me.
"Justin and Jacob," he said. "We're not sure who’s who yet."
I took another deep breath. My legs had stopped feeling and my pulse was light and fast. I felt Marty's hand lock onto my arm and yank up.
"There's more," he said.
One foot in front of the other, that choking, meaty, slaughterhouse stink all around me, I followed Marty from the room.
We stood in the hallway, our backs against the wall, and smoked. The ceiling seemed terribly low. It was dark, too, even with the recessed flood lamps bearing down from above. A uniform jangled by, his face averted, crossed himself, and headed into the twins' room.
"You make enough money to get out of this business, then come back for this kind of shit," Marty said. "Does it really pay that well?"
"Go to hell, Martin."
"Wish I could."
"Damm… damn."
"He does, He does. Mom and Dad are in the master. There's a daughter, too, but she must have been gone. Her bed's made up and she isn't anywhere around."
I went in. It looked as if something had fed there perhaps-captured prey, torn it apart, partaken. Or maybe not eaten at all, but simply shredded the room and the people in it, searching for something very small, very hidden, very important. The smell was strong. Both bodies-smallish dark-skinned bodies-were opened and emptied like drawers. Their contents were everywhere, strewn around the floor, hurled against walls, piled on the bed, strung from the blades of the ceiling fan, flung onto the lamp shades, the blinds, the television screen, the dresser, hung from the top fronds of a palm that stood by a window, splattered against that same window and drying now from red to black in the golden summer sunlight of morning. The carcass of Mr. Wynn, on his back, arms out, was spread across the bed. Mrs. Wynn was hanging in the shower stall, tied by her hair to the nozzle fixture. Some of what had been inside her was spilled out in a pile over the drain, which had backed up, making a pool of blood.
The two Crime Scene men were going to work with a video camera and evidence bags when I left and found Martin, still in the hallway.
I heard a muted commotion from the living room, followed by Sheriff Daniel Winters and his entourage coming briskly toward us up the hallway. Their footsteps had a ring of assurance. Winters is a tall, very thin man, bespectacled, a sharp dresser. Gray colors his hair at the temples, and his eyes, behind the glasses, are black, hyper-vigilant, and consuming. He often stoops, catches himself at it, straightens himself, then slumps back into his characteristic posture again. There were three men besides Dan-two assistant DAs I knew, a uniform I'd never seen-and a pretty red-haired woman named Karen Schulz, the Sheriff's Department Community Relations director. Winters nodded at me on his way past, then took Martin by the arm without a word and led him into the master suite. The prosecutors and deputy followed. I heard Winters's shocked expletive, then heard it again, filled with outrage, disbelief, dread.
Karen Schultz studied me with her always-alert green eyes. "We're going to have to hold back a lot of this, Russell
"You just say what."
"I need to see your copy before you file."
"You can see it, but I won't change it. Tell me what to sit on, and I'll sit on it."
"We'll admit the possibility of a link to Ellison; Fernandez."
"That's why I'm here."
"But nothing positive until the ME's done and all the labs are complete. You will use the words possibly linked and say we are attempting to establish a definite connection. You not encouraged to use the term serial killer."
"Repeat offender sounds a little trivial."
She sighed, glanced toward the door of the master suite, then looked back at me. Karen Schultz's hair was straight and luxurious, her skin pale, her nose freckled. She never smiled. "Go ahead with it for the Journal if you want, but if we can't connect the scenes, you're the one who'll be wearing the ass ears."
"What time is the press conference?"
"Four tomorrow. That vets out to a two-day scoop on all the other print. Spin Dina well."
"I will. Thanks."
She looked again at the door to the master. "Gad, I hate this," she said.
All I could think of to say back was, "I'm sorry."
I loitered, taking notes, getting the basics, sneaking off to a little laundry room with a door that opened to the backyard, so I could smoke, breath fresh air, and have a drink from my flask.
The detectives quickly determined that Mr. Tran Wynn had been forty-one years old, a physician. Maia was thirty-six and had worked for a local aerospace firm.
The twins-Jacob and Justin-were two.
The daughter, Kim, was blessedly gone. Where? I looked into her room. The bed was made, and the cops had found the door open, whereas the doors to the twins' room and the master suite were both closed. Karen Schultz demanded another search of the house for Kim, which proved fruitless. Winters ordered a door-to-door canvass of the neighborhood for the girl, after Martin and DA assistants all impressed on him that for the killer to take the girl alive would be "out of profile." APB pending. Bloodhounds considered.
"No story until we find the girl," said Karen. Her face was so pale, her freckles showed even darker.
They didn't want Kim reading about the death of her entire family-her entire universe-in the evening Journal. I didn’t either. "Don't worry," I said. "The Wynns are Vietnamese, aren’t they?"
Karen nodded. "The last name is an anglicized version of Nguyen-pronunciation is similar. Jacob, Justin, and Kim? I say Tran and Maia were trying hard to fit in as Americans."
"A lot of Catholics came down from the North," I said
"I guess the Wynns should have stayed put. Least they could have been buried in their own ground."
Half an hour later, Martin found me in the laundry nook and waved me back to the living room. I'd already filled ten pages in my notebook. "You'll like this," he said. Winters, the two assistant DAs, both CS men, and Karen all stood in a loose semicircle facing the Wynn's impressive stereo system. One of the uniforms hit a button and the loud hiss of a tape can through the speakers. It continued for ten seconds or so, and realized it wasn't all hiss-it was also the sound of ocean water on sand, or maybe cars on a highway, or both.
The voice that came on next was a man's-slow, deliberate, almost pleasant. The words were spaced out and careful enunciated, as if for a student to hear and repeat:
" Coming… Seeing… Having… Willing Cleaning… Taking… Jah…"
Then more waves, tiny voices in the far background, and a long inhalation, followed by silence. What came next was the same ocean-heavy background, the same voice, but now it was slurred, badly garbled, as if the man was in a drug stupor or falling off to sleep:
"Ice-a h-h-homing gen spoon. O-o-ouch treble t-t-tings. A-a-ax is cute me. G-gren duffel m-m-m'back. G-gren duffel m-m-m'back. M-m-make m-m-m'do tings. C-c-cun seed brat cun wormin from he…"
Then the end of sound, just the near silence of the Wynn's speakers.
We listened to it again, then a third time.
"Green duffel," said Assistant DA Peter Haight.
"Green duffel on my back," said Winters.
"Green devil on my back," said Marty. "Makes me do things."
"Execute me," I said.
Parish stared at me.
"That's what I heard, too," said Karen.
The most pressured of silences came over us. Winters looked around, studying each face in the group. Heads shook. Karen asked to hear it again. We listened.
Suddenly, a cold wave of astonishment rose up and broke over me.
Something was very wrong here.
This I could not believe.
Not only what we were hearing but the fact that the dicks had found it so quickly. A houseful of death and blood, latents, footprints probably, hair and fiber almost assuredly, and these guys turn on the goddamned stereo? Winters must have read the amazed doubt on my face. He looked at the two assistant DAs and the two CS investigators and told them to beat it.
Then it hit me. Of course.
"Nothing about the recordings," said Winters.
"Nothing about the writing on the walls," said Schultz.
"And nothing about you guys finding the same things at the Ellison and Fernandez places," I said. "What have you done?"
"We'll expect you to omit that question in the Journal.” said Karen. "Or we'll omit you from everything that happen: this county from now until the day you die."
“Why?"
Winters locked eyes with me. "We made a judgment call and it turned out to be the wrong one. It was a mistake, hoped we could get him before he did this again. It's that simple Russell. We're giving you this story. Don't burn us. Help us. don't forget that splashing blood all over page one never saved anybody's life. Not in my opinion, anyway."span›
In the ensuing silence, Parish glared at me; Karen Schultz looked at the floor and bit her lip;, Winters sighed and stared stubbornly ahead through space.
I was almost too stunned to think. The only thing I could come up with was to pursue my temporary advantage through this silence.
"Let me hear the other tapes," I said. "Let me see the photos of the walls."
"No deal," said Karen. "Never."
"Fine," said Winters. "Okay."
"Monroe is a reporter, sir," said Karen.
"That's why he'll sell us his conscience for a story," said Winters, a true master of the art of accommodation. "Right, Russ?"
No reporter on earth would have said anything but yes. If I didn't, I could burn them big-time-once. But the same pages on which I flushed away my access to the Sheriff's Department and prosecutors for the rest of my life would be used two days later to soak up pee in a thousand litter boxes throughout I county. And I'd be out in the cold. And whatever damage Winters's silence had done was certainly, clearly, done forever. I was a little surprised at how Winters had changed since I'd worked for him. He was a harried political animal now, thinking ahead, watching out for himself, but not taking care of business. He'd made a terrible call, a call he wouldn't have made five years ago, and he knew it. He also knew he could hide it. Karen and I would do it for him.
"I’ll rent it out for a while," I said.
"And I'll get you a front-row seat when we send this guy to the gas," said Winters. "Until then, you owe us."
He turned and walked out.
I stood in the laundry room again, leaning against the washer and looking out the open door to the eucalyptus tree in the yard.
That was when I first heard the faint, shallow breathing very close to me.
It took me a second to realize what it was. I didn't move. I figured a dog sleeping behind the hamper, maybe, or a cat up on the shelf. For some reason, it scared me. I didn't blink. It was coming from just below me, just in front of me, still barely audible.
It stopped, then it started again.
Very slowly, I reached out to the dryer and pulled the door toward me. Gad, please, I thought… The light inside went on and two eyes came into view. I knelt and held out my hands, palms up.
"It's over," I said. "I won't hurt you. You can come out now, Kim."
She climbed out and into my arms. I guessed she was four or five. She began whimpering and her breathing deepened. I walked us out into the sunshine. She dug her face into the crook of my neck. "Mommy screamed and I heard a bang. Mommy screamed and then she didn't scream."
"Did you see him, Kim?"
I felt her forehead nodding yes against my neck.
"He was big and hairy and had a red bat."
"Like a baseball bat?"
"When he came out of Mommy's and Daddy's. I want Mommy and Daddy now."
I rocked her and patted her back and let the sun hit her hair. It was matted with the vomit she'd given up in terror. "Did you see his face?"
"He was a hairy giant and had a green robe. I want Mommy and Daddy now."
I carried her back into the house, down the hallway, and into her living room. Martin and Karen were still there, standing by the stereo.
"Oh My," said Karen. She walked toward us with a: officious stride that dissolved about halfway across the room when she broke into a run. She unwrapped Kim from my shoulders, hefted the girl onto her own, and carried her toward the front door.
Martin and I stood alone. The piercing flatness of his eye unsettled me.
"Was there a tape at Amber's?" I asked.
He nodded. And his expression softened.
"You listen to it?"
"Once. Same garbled shit as this one. Same voice."
"Were there beach sounds, cars in the background?"
"Yeah. Same shit. He left it rewound and ready in he tape player. I found it because the power light was on and that seemed strange."
I considered. "Did the Eye do Amber, Marty?"
"Someone wanted us to think so."
"The Eye doesn't cart his victims off in plastic bags."
"The Eye doesn't make beds and cover stains, either, I'd imagine."
"Then what the hell is going on?"
The smile that Marty offered next was positively bizarre. "It's not that complicated, Russ."
I let the statement go because I didn't quite understand it yet; I hadn't looked at me from Martin Parish's point of view. Now I began to, and a little spasm of fear fluttered in my heart. "Where is it now-the tape from Amber's?"
"The second night, when I found you there, it was gone. Just like Amber was."
Then it hit me, clearly and suddenly as a fist in the stomach. Marty was prepared to believe I'd killed Amber. I could see the conviction in his eyes, unalterable as faith.
"Grace told me she wasn't there that night," I said.
"Then one of us is a liar."
"Maybe a killer, too, Marty?"
Marty was actually smiling again when he said, "I confess, Monroe. I did them all. I can't stop because it feels so good. Excuse me now while I go find some evidence so I can arrest myself."